Chelsea's decision to "restructure" their scouting network comes less than a month after the club's chairman, Bruce Buck, told a conference of the game's executives that scouts are an integral part of a modern football business.

The Premier League leaders have lost 15 of their 35 scouting staff but insisted on Sunday that the move had long been planned and has nothing to do with the credit crunch that has decimated the wealth of most Russian oligarchs. But how does that sit with a presentation at Stamford Bridge last month in which Buck and the director of football development, Frank Arnesen, extolled the virtues of their scouting network?

"[We now have a] scouting network," said Buck on October 8. "Before that most of the interest was generated by players' agents and that is definitely not the way to go."

It is hard to see where Arnesen's scouts have gone wrong. As he pointed out, on his arrival in 2005 only six of the 50 players on Chelsea's books aged between 16 and 20 were internationals. Today 40 of the 50 are, and half of them are English. "The recruitment of a scouting network is the most important thing at a club," he said.

A representative of the club's owner, Roman Abramovich, insisted that unlike many of his Russian peers he has personally been unaffected by the financial crisis. But on October 9 Buck admitted: "The credit crunch will definitely have an impact on Chelsea, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but we have to keep it in mind."

Could the "restructuring" just possibly be linked?

A spokesman for Chelsea could not be reached yesterday.

Risky business

If Chelsea face a large payout in bonuses this year - as their ever-more-convincing title challenge suggests they will - then winning trophies could paradoxically end up being more expensive than being the multiple runners-up they were last year. No surprise, then, that in the financial downturn clubs and sports organisations are increasingly turning to a new financial services model to reduce their liability in the event of success. Risk-management companies offer clubs and sports organisations such as football associations the chance to "hedge" their exposure to the multimillion-pound bonus payments players are due in return for on-the-pitch success. A pre-season payment to the risk manager insures the club against success. It is not known if Arsenal have this year wasted their money in this way.

Mapping out the money

Minor sports such as orienteering and waterskiing face losing hundreds of thousands of pounds in financial support from UK Sport as it seeks savings in the downturn. UKS looks like suffering a shortfall of up to £79m in external funding and at a board meeting on December 2 will look at where it can cut costs. No decisions have yet been made but waterskiing's £220,000 grant and orienteering's £200,000 appear hard to justify for the Olympic medal-winners' funding body. So too repeats of the £750,000 paid to host junior rugby world championships in 2007 and 2008.

Ross before wickets?

BBC Sport's decision to pour an estimated £2.35m a race in to its coverage of formula one from next year appears good value when compared to 3Jonathan Ross's nearly £6m-a-year contract. Even when the F1 deal equates to £200m over five years - a figure the BBC disputes, although it refuses to reveal the true amount - the price does not seem too steep when Lewis Hamilton's traction is considered. ITV yesterday revealed audiences for the Brazilian grand prix at Interlagos, where Hamilton clinched his world title on Sunday, and its figures suggest it has left the sport at the wrong time. A staggering 8.8m viewers watched the entire race, with a peak audience of 13.1m. They were the second-highest sports-viewing figures this year after the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United at 10m-14.6m. ITV sacrificed F1 for Champions League coverage but, Stanford Series notwithstanding, sports fans might think the BBC has miscalculated over cricket. Wossie's £16.9m, three-year deal would have bought four years of England highlights.